Listening Fast and Slow

OK, it's a parody of the best-seller on thinking.  But in music it is a real problem.  The emphasis is on fast thinking, whereas listening requires the ability to adjust speed, as Beethoven well knew and made explicit in many of his works.

But I will be addressing the topic from a variety of points of view.  First, the problem of parental listening.  With the piano usually in a public space (living room, in most households) it is extremely difficult for a child to be aware of anything but a parental ear listening, an ear which almost certainly has been conditioned by exposure to polished performances, most of them on recordings.

I am involved in an in-depth exploration of sonata reading with a young adult whose ear works with extraordinary speed and accuracy but whose facility at the instrument is much slower.  I suggested he move the family piano (played by no other family member) into his room.  "No space," says he.  Then move something out.

He will never be comfortable exploring the connection between his own ear and the music on the page as long as the hearing surrounding him is moving at an unrealistic pace in relation to his auditory thought process.

Is the Piano Necessarily Meant for Public Consumption?

People sometimes tell me that, while they have children who are interested in the piano, they don't have room for a real one.  Therefore they buy a keyboard.

But why does that real piano have to fit into the living room?  Why can't it be an upright that goes into the child's bedroom?  If it is to be shared by more than one child why can't it go into a foyer, or a rec room?

The beauty of a guitar is that it can be taken into one's own room for one's own private exploration and pleasure.  There is some assumption about the piano being public that is not essential to the instrument's definition.

My family was fortunate to have two pianos: a grand, on which I practiced (though never for hours on end), located in the living room; an upright in my daughter's room, hers to fool around on howsoever she desired.  Fortunately sharing was not an issue as my son, having the ear of a horn player, was drawn to the piano only for occasional musings.

It is possible to deal with the sharing problem so that no one feels left out.  Egg-timers and alarm clocks come in handy. The ability to close doors is crucial here:  "I don't want anyone to listen while I play" is an valid a personal statement as "I don't want to listen to you play."

I installed outdoor weather stripping on all the interior doors of my apartment to provide maximum soundproofing.  It works.

Singing!

It is my enormous good fortune to have alighted at a church (St. Ignatius of Antioch), whose superb young organist, James Kennerley, is also a superb tenor, who has the good sense to encourage fine singing on the part of volunteers as well as professional choir.

Singing is the root of everything in my musical life; it is where I experience complete integration.  The sound of an in-tune group is irresistible; words take on a dimension they cannot otherwise have.  Being part of that sound is one of the best experiences I can imagine.

For many years I led an a cappella sight-singing group.  What started out to be a six-week experiment lasted for over 25 years.  I miss it enormously.  Amateurs, non-singers, actually.  We learned to sight-sing by tuning the staff.  We were always in tune.  (Colleagues tell me that's impossible, but it's true!) It was always music. 

Why don't more people gravitate to that basic pleasure?  I often wonder.  Maybe it's because it is a real single-tasking enterprise, requiring devotion and concentration.  Or maybe it's another manifestation of the over-simplification of listening that has resulted from over-consumption of canned goods.

Music From the Inside Out

I have learned from years of thinking and observing based on the Tonal Refraction process that individuals have strong inner lives of tone.  Sometimes that life is brought out via an instrument, sometimes via singing, sometimes via a memory of some kind.

People have long wondered what gives music its meaning.  I maintain it is this inner life of tone.

Starting January 2014 I will  be teaching Music From the Inside Out:  a new approach to sonatas (or suites, or cycles) based on your own inner life of tone.

After many years teaching my piano students this technique and seeing that it works, I will now expand it to include players of all instruments and also singers.

You orient your choice of repertoire not by your technical level or some other mechanical proposition, but solely on the basis of your tone imagination.  Choosing from the table of contents of whatever collection you bring by whatever composer, n'importe qui, your selection reflects your tone orientation of the moment.  We go from there.  Nothing is too hard, or too easy, for that matter.

It is remarkable how the process engages even the most insecure pianist in the sonata as a process, working as if from the level of a composer or improvisor.  Hard becomes fascinating.  Long becomes compelling.

Go to my website.  Get in touch.  You can do it.  www.tonalrefraction.com

I've Heard That Before!

The one thing I have never been able to tolerate is the feeling of "same-old/same-old" reinforced (actually forced in that it is unrelentingly repetitive) listening epitomized by the recording.

It is physically impossible for a live sound to be repeated exactly as it was made last time.  That is why real pianos are the only pianos worthy of the name.  That is why live has to be heard in the room (though live on the radio is not completely awful), and why children should be encouraged to engage in variation, so as not to learn that anticipated repetition is the point of music, as so many are still taught.

Anticipated repetition is the point of something else, not music.  Any suggestions what that something might be called?

Listening for Intention

Playing someone else's music is a doubly difficult enterprise.  First, it is difficult to discern from the printed page what sounds the composer had in mind.  Theoretical analysis does not help this endeavor one bit; rather it tends to obscure it.

Second, one has to account for one's own internal life of tone and of timing.  For the fast-paced, like myself, Adagio might as well read Impossible.  For the tone sensitive, like myself, certain tonalities, like A major, should be called Your Teeth will Hurt When You Hear This.

I have begun teaching people how to read sonatas based on their internal organization, rather than on the sonata as a thing with an existence independent of their personal experience.  It makes all the difference.  At first reading I see the eyes light up: "I get it!"

I Bet You Haven't Heard This Before!

If I have one fantasy about Mozart's playing it is that he played with that attitude, and with the skill to pull it off--every time. 

The reason people are afraid to go hear his music is that they have heard it all before, mostly played as if it exists to have been heard before.  As some would say, "Pullleeeze!"

What would be the point of that?

Within the past week my playing received two of the most meaningful possible compliments, each from a professional musician in response to a different Mozart sonata:  To the G major: "It sounded as if you were making it up as you went along."  To the late D major:  "It hardly sounded like a sonata."

Thank you.  We are taught to analyze these works until they lose all possible vitality; we are not taught to let them speak their own distinctive language which, by the way, is crafted so as not to be repetitive, however repetitive it may look on paper.

You should have been there.